Transbiotic: Across Life
by Elizabeth ArStrange
Summary: A medical emergency radiates across the team's lives, shaping new love, reconciling old, and uncovering past wrongs. RosenxOC with Cameronx? and possible Garyx? from all perspectives.
1. Chapter One: Point of Departure

**Transbiotic: Across Life**

_A medical emergency radiates across the team's lives, shaping new love, reconciling old, and uncovering past wrongs._

Disclaimer: All recognizable characters, plot points, and information belong to their respective creators. All unrecognizable characters, plot points, and information are my own. This work of fanfiction is produced solely out of admiration, obsession, and the pursuit of completing a story of significant length.

Special thanks to the lovely Boredom Queen of Insanity for her encouragement and beta reading!

This story opens on episode 9, _Blind Spot_, amidst Griffin's attack on the office in pursuit of Dr. Kern. From there on, things fall a little out of line… or perhaps they move across these character's lives, to places they wouldn't otherwise belong.

**Chapter One – Point of Departure**

Fiery red and fully visible, Kern's assassin, the "unsanctioned variable", stepped out from their blind spots and into view. The team, minus Rachel, looked on in horror as Griffin walked casually through the strewn mustard and baby powder to where Gary knelt on the floor, his laptop held before him like a shield. Griffin twirled a knife lazily before herself, like she wasn't even particularly interested in what she was about to do. She smirked, nearly purring at Gary's lackluster defense.

"Oh, pu' that away, love." Griffin struck out at the laptop with long, gloved fingers just as Gary snatched it away; a typical game of cat and mouse.

If Gary was a mouse, though, then they were rats, made to watch from locked cages as one of their own was put to an end. The cages, of course, were their own offices. Even as Bill began to amp up, Cameron could tell it wouldn't be enough. He was off his game. Even with his alpha back, Bill wasn't likely to bust through his door any time soon.

_So much for dinner._ Cameron knew there were bigger things at stake at the moment—namely, Gary's life—but, dammit, Patti had finally agreed to a sit down dinner, him, her, _and _Tyler, and now he had to explain this.

His job, his body, even his mind… everything seemed bent against them ever being a family again.

All that ran through Cameron's mind as he did a quick scan of his office, regretting his sparse furnishings for the first time. At least Nina would have something to throw at the woman.

Cameron cleared his thoughts with one violent shake of his head.

_Don't you even _think_ about Nina now. You need to focus, breathe. This is a combat situation._

Almost immediately, Cameron felt himself rise to a higher level of thinking. His alpha, in addition to giving him a significant boost as an athlete, allowed him to follow complex chains of events from beginning to end. Now he needed to start one.

_What do I have?_

Inward facing windows that didn't open. Likely made of plexiglass.

_An obstacle._

A standard desk and office chair- made of cheap wood and plastic respectively.

_A distraction._

The interoffice vents, left open in a vain attempt to sooth their tempers on a particularly _hot_ day at the office.

Cameron smiled grimly.

_Didn't do much with a dead DoD agent in the lobby, but they're perfect now._

The only other thing he needed was already in his hand—the baseball from his final perfect game. It always seemed to find its way into Cameron's hands when things got serious… maybe it still had some magic in it. With little more than a glance over his shoulder, Cameron turned to the wall and threw all his strength behind a reeling butterfly pitch.

Just a glance… and at a glance, a brown haired Gary crouched on the floor looked an awful lot like a young Tyler Hicks. His son.

_No, no! Tyler's not back there, he's at dinner with Patti, focus!_

Cameron knew it was a mistake as soon as the baseball left his hand—and, of course, that was exactly why things went wrong.

The ball shot ahead and hit the wall at an angle (that much he could manage drunk, much less with his alpha thrown off balance) and flew off into the space behind him. In the time it took Cameron to turn, it was through the vent.

In that instant, the ginger assassin knocked the laptop from Gary's hands and went for his neck. The blade hovered in limbo, playing at the air by Gary's throat as Griffin faced the frozen office.

"Now, about Kern. I think it would be best if—" Cameron's pitch sliced through the air, hitting not her head, as he had intended, but her clenched hand. As Griffin flinched wildly away from the pain, her grip didn't falter. The knifed recoiled with her, slicing an inch deep across Gary's neck.

All at once, the condiment strewn office seemed to explode.

Bill broke through the glass, metal framing, and plaster that had previously been his office wall. Both he and Dr. Rosen dove in Gary's direction.

The jagged cracks that had hung in corners and behind curtains ripped down the walls. The sound of a giant sheet of glass thrown against concrete erupted down the hall. Dr. Kern, glasses askew and drenched in sweat, burst into the lobby.

Rachel, just moments too late, swung the discarded laptop at the assassin's skull. Already ducking away from Cameron's pitch, Griffin ducked again, evading Rachel as she darted down the hall, ready to pounce on the disoriented Kern.

Blood, startlingly red, surged from Gary's open veins. He folded forward, shouting unintelligibly as he reached instinctively for his neck. His hands were painted instantly in blood.

"Gary!" Cameron and Nina's cries wove together as one, but both remained trapped in the office. Without so much as looking up, Dr. Rosen fell to his knees at Gary's side, shedding his jacket and pressing it to the younger man's throat in a single motion. As much of his strength seems devoted to stopping the flow of blood as was to keeping Gary's own hands from clawing at the wound.

"You're—you're okay Gary! I need you to calm down. Just breathe!" Dr. Rosen pressed the jacket even more firmly against the laceration, hoping to reassure him, before casting his gaze across the room. "Rachel, Bill, call 911!"

The laptop fell to the floor as Rachel's hands flew up to cover the tears already streaming down her face.

"Oh my god, Gary, I thought I had her!" Distraught, Rachel moved to dial the phone in lounge before she had even finished speaking, but Nina pounded violently against her office door.

"No, no, the phones are out! Run Rachel!" Rachel danced on the spot, struggling for a moment to process the situation, before starting for the lobby.

Bill beat her to it. Running on the last of his alpha surge, he leapt forward and knocked Griffin to the ground just as she moved to pounce on Dr. Kern. The blind but bespectacled alpha stood unsteadily beside them, disoriented by his own sonic force as Bill and his attacker wrestled for control at his feet.

Realizing the elevator was not an option, Rachel turned on her heel and began the three floor descent to ground level.

Just as Bill managed to wrap his arms around her leathery torso, Griffin lashed out, slicing at Kern's legs with the same knife that slashed Gary's throat. Ripped from his stupor, Dr. Kern cried out and stumbled backwards over Bill, cracking the back of his head against the elevator panel as he tumbled to the ground. Floor 1 glowed white above them as the elevator doors slid open and Griffin sent a well placed heel into Bill's crotch. Free of his hold, she slipped between the elevator doors, hurling her knife into Kern's abdomen just as they closed.

"Dammit!" Adrenaline burned, Bill rolled onto his back, pulling in deep, laborious breaths between attempts to sit up. Whatever chemicals had been in Dr. Rosen's syringe, it would seem, wouldn't return his alpha ability as willingly as time.

"Gary!" Bill sputtered and fell back against the floor. "Gary, are you okay?"

Dr. Kern moaned feebly beside him, still alive, but badly beaten.

**xxx**

Thank you so much for reading, your feedback would be much appreciated! I intend to carry this through the last three episodes of Season One, so I hope you'll stick along for the ride!

Oh, and if you don't hear from me by then, enjoy Season Two! I know I will …


	2. Chapter Two: Technological Rapture

**Transbiotic: Across Life**

_A medical emergency radiates across the team's lives, shaping new love, reconciling old, and uncovering past wrongs._

Disclaimer: All recognizable characters, plot points, and information belong to their respective creators. All unrecognizable characters, plot points, and information are my own. This work of fanfiction is produced solely out of admiration, obsession, and the pursuit of completing a story of significant length.

My continuing gratitude to those who have read, followed, and reviewed, and to Boredom Queen of Insanity for beta reading!

**Chapter Two – Technological Rapture**

A span of several minutes passed between when Rachel left and when those remaining first heard sirens in the distance. When he was finally able to stand, Bill found the office doors weren't even locked any more. Cameron and Nina were able to walk right out.

_How nice of her, _Gary thought. It hadn't crossed his mind that, in light of what Griffin had just done, it wasn't really much of a nice thing at all; at the moment, Gary couldn't even muster enough focus to remember what had happened to him. He was lying flat on his back now, with Cameron holding up his legs on one end and Dr. Rosen applying pressure to his neck on the other. Gary thought he had seen Cameron crying at one point—well, not crying _exactly_, just sort of damp around the eyes and breathing heavily—but all he was really picking up on was the hotness on his neck beneath Dr. Rosen's jacket.

He thought he knew what it was, and he wanted to make sure, but Dr. Rosen wouldn't let him touch it.

"Weh-why are you crying, Cameron?" Gary's voice was breathy and strangled. "Men don't cry…" Even Gary couldn't tell if he was joking, but Cameron had to crack a smile as he swiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve.

"That's not true Gary." Shaking his head, Cameron redoubled his support of Gary's legs. "That's just not true."

"Buh-Bill said—" Before Gary could finish, he cut off into a weak cough. The air tasted simply wrong, like copper and wetness, and he felt like all he could do was stare.

"Shh, Gary. You're in shock. Just relax, breathe slowly." Dr. Rosen loomed above him, backed only by the webs and strands of neon wavelengths. They reflected down on Gary through his glasses, masking the older man's intense concern with a technological glare. It took all of Gary's strength to reach out and touch the one that hovered just by Dr. Rosen's nose.

His hand was clammy and pale and he had to try twice to open the link.

A small screen, a private window into the world, opened at Gary's finger tip. First it showed Rachel, wild eyed and accompanied down a nearby street by a man Gary didn't recognize. With a flick of his finger, it bared the image of a pair of ambulances and a police car rushing toward them.

Both scenes were viewed through thick glass windows, and otherwise obscured by adhesive signage and shelved dry goods, but they were good enough for Gary.

_You can always count on convenience stores. Even if you're just using the bathroom, or buying that shredded cheese, they're watching. _The thought merely wafted through him, fuzzy and detached. Gary focused instead upon the one thing of which he was sure.

"Rachel…" Gary could hear the sirens now.

"Yes, yes she's coming Gary. You're going to be okay." Gary didn't have to be fully conscious to know he didn't like people touching him, but as disoriented as he was, the way in which Dr. Rosen rubbed his arm then was actually quite soothing.

As he faded out, Gary didn't let the wavelength close. When all he could do was twitch, his mother, viewed through a webcam at home, flickered across the transparent monitor.

She was doing laundry, folding a purple shirt.

Before he could think further on the matter, Gary ascended from consciousness and into the ether of half-dreams.

**xx**

Almost immediately—in dream time, at least—Gary felt something flat and solid slide beneath him and lift him up into the air. Gary wasn't sure he believed it, but it almost felt like he was being lifted up to heaven. It was very uncomfortable and Gary squirmed weakly beneath his restraints. They were stiff and he didn't like how they felt against his skin.

In some vague way, though, he wanted to see the purple shirt again. And his mother.

Before Gary could try to call up the purple wavelength again, though, he was being slid into a cool, cavernous space. As his eyelids flickered weakly, he thought he saw Dr. Rosen climb in beside him. This was followed by a loud "bang, bang!", like the shutting of gates, and the start of motion.

As a pitchy wailing echoed through the cavern, Gary felt Dr. Rosen's warm, familiar hand in his own. He still wasn't one for touching but, given the state he was in, all he could really do was moan in protest.

Gary felt himself fade for a time. A nebulous sort of wondering about which streets they were on (were they driving on R's and A's, or had they opted for the certainty of G's and W's?) filled his mind. It cleared only as a sterile breeze brushed his slack features.

Gary's eye flew open. It was like nothing he had seen before. In his moment of absolute frailty, Gary was blind to everything but wavelengths and signals. The language of information.

…_Heartbeat 110 bpm…_

…_At this time, we believe Lupis to best fit the symptoms presented in…_

…_Search: How 2 pass A drugtest NOW!..._

…_New York Hospital extends sincere congratulations on the birth of…_

Dr. Rosen's hand slipped away as bodies and bodies pushed his stretcher through a distant hall. Gary felt little for it. He was in a state of utter terror and awe, trapped somewhere between the agony of Anna's cyber attack and a glimpse of true meaning.

_...Hospital de Nueva York extende sinceras felicitaciones por el nacimiento de…_

…_Tuberculosis, or TB, is an infectious disease that attacks the lungs…_

…_Sandra Bell. Relation: Mother. Presented with symptoms of late-term misca— _

_Dr. Schultz to emergency bay five._

A small, foreign hand interlocked with Gary's own and he felt his personal rapture collapse around him.

It was touching all of him, all at once. Gary felt it under his skin like nothing before—like Velcro, sand, and a tie around his neck—and wanted to scream. He ached to kick his feet, to tear at his chest, anything to stop the grating in his head.

He couldn't, but he could hear again, could smell, could _see._ For all the hand was doing to him, something about it had that same soothing quality as Dr. Rosen's hand against his arm.

Gary felt a tingling in the raw, bleeding tissue of his throat.

He smelt lavender.

**xxx**

With the premier just moments away, thank you again for reading!


	3. Chapter Three: Father Figure

Transbiotic: Across Life

_A medical emergency radiates across the team's lives, shaping new love, reconciling old, and uncovering past wrongs._

Disclaimer: All recognizable characters, plot points, and information belong to their respective creators. All unrecognizable characters, plot points, and information are my own. This work of fanfiction is produced solely out of admiration, obsession, and the pursuit of completing a story of significant length.

My continuing gratitude to those who have read, followed, and reviewed.

**Chapter 3 – Father Figure**

It was an uncharacteristically quiet night in the emergency wing of New York Hospital, but the silence did little to settle Lee's nerves. If anything, a bit of bustle, the whirr of machines and a swirl of voices, might have kept the ones in his head from seeming so strong. As much as his career, his life, centered around thinking, and thinking about why something was thought, and thinking about how to get that thought to change, when Lee was left to his own mind, things got terribly loud.

Their room, nothing more than a privacy curtain jutting out from and back into a wall, offered little room for pacing. Instead, Lee stood at Gary's bedside, alternatively adjusting his glasses and running a hand through his salt and pepper hair.

Lee had known as soon as the Department of Defense had contacted him that he would need to be particularly careful to keep Gary out of harm's way. Violence wasn't something he willingly prescribed to anyone, but to someone of Gary's disposition, of his abilities, his frame of mind … Lee suspected there had been more to Gary's episode in the hall than simple shock. Merely in remaining conscious, Gary's brain had exhibited a disturbing unwillingness—or inability—to shut down when presented with such a data rich environment.

Somewhere between the ambulance and his room, his gaze had become purely electric. For less than a moment had Lee seen Gary in those eyes.

Any true assessment of the transducer could only be left to the future, however. For the moment, Gary lay sedated beneath paper-thin hospital sheets. His bed had been made almost completely flat to accommodate the weave of bandages and medical tape that encased his neck., which shifted with the rise and fall of his chest.

Even standing in front of him, Lee couldn't shake the image of Gary's neck plastered in broken skin and blood. He stopped in his fidgeting and stared intently down at him.

_This is the present. Not blood, but bandages._

Taking a steadying breath, as if to cement the image of Gary at least partially healed in his mind, Lee retired to their cubicle's only chair, a sparsely padded, plastic thing in the corner. Lee leaned back with a sigh and let his head rest against the wall. The refreshing cool of tile seeped through the back of his graying hair as he looked out across the room.

It was, perhaps, the first time in his knowing Gary that he had abstained from dipping into the invisible world of waves and signals for any notable amount of time. It felt terribly unnatural to see Gary's arms limp at his sides, his fingers unmoving.

_For now, I'll just have to look away._

Clipping his glasses to the collar of his shirt, Lee closed his eyes and massaged his temple.

_Still so much to do… I'll need to check on Cameron, make arrangements for the office, and speak with Agent Clay about Kern. That he's even alive now is— _Metal ran against metal as a woman in loose blue scrubs and a lab coat slipped through the curtains. She was cradling a roll of bandages, a bottle of anti-septic solution, and a pair of tiny silver scissors in the crook of her arm, freeing up her hands to pull on a pair of white gloves.

Her fingers moved in a half-conscious sort of manner, suggesting force of habit, as did her surprise upon noticing Lee tucked away the corner of the room.

"Oh! I apologize… I didn't realize anyone was still here this late." Setting her supplies down on the small table by Gary's bedside, she smiled uncertainly in his direction. "I'm, um, just about to change his dressings."

Letting his hand fall from his face, Lee observed quietly for a moment as she adjusted her gloves and arranged her supplies on the table. Angled toward Gary, her features were largely obscured by the thick, brown-blonde curls pinned to the back of her head. Though the stance may simply have been a product of professionalism, her attempt to afford him some measure of privacy while she tended to her patient, her posture suggested otherwise.

Lee felt his inner psychologist kicking in before he could so much as speak.

Hunched shoulders and restrictive movements. Almost as if she were sheltering herself against Lee's gaze, as if her preparations—her examination of the bottle of anti-septic and Gary's bandages—were no more than a pretense. The defensive behavior was vaguely characteristic of his sessions with Nina, however…

Lee shook his head softly.

_Stop this! You're not going to let this mess color your perceptions of people. If you can't trust a doctor, who _can_ you trust?_ Lee put on his glasses, and tried not to think of Dr. Kern. _She's tired, just like everyone else._

Hand again on his temple, Lee willed himself to stand.

"Of course. I'll just be going then, Doctor?" Lee turned to collect his jacket from the back of his chair before he could remember himself. It had been discarded along with Gary's soiled clothes when they had first arrived in the ER. Shaking his head, Lee adjusted his glasses and looked up, only to realize she was yet to respond.

It seemed she had taken his moment of distraction as an opportunity to examine him as well. Not romantically—though, certainly, that form of attention would have put Lee off his guard as well—but almost as if using him for comparison.

As their eyes met, all brown, she immediately turned back to the table.

"Ah! Um, Dr. Schultz…" Dr. Schultz took a breath, as if she didn't particularly like what she was about to say, and took up Gary's chart in her hand. "Norah Schultz." Lee raised an eyebrow and eyed her uncertainly as he headed for the break in the curtain.

"Yes… Well, I'll be going then. Take good care of him." Dr. Schultz nodded mutely as Lee parted the curtains and stepped out into the ER. Before they could fall close, she raised a hand to stop him.

"Wait." Though she was nearly inaudible, Lee caught the curtain with his arm and gestured for her to continue. She flinched somewhat, as if she hadn't expected him to stop, but pressed on. "Ahm… are you his father?"

Lee paused for a breath, as if unsure he had heard her correctly, then laughed dryly and smiled.

"No, just a concerned coworker." Turning her attention back to the chart, Dr. Schultz nodded, as if a weight had been removed from her shoulders, if only temporarily.

"My mistake. Good night." She smiled quietly, looking near him, but not quite _at _him as he turned to go. It was peculiar, the feeling of someone looking through him. Having worked with Gary and any number of DoD agents, though, it wasn't something Lee was altogether unfamiliar with.

"Good night." Lee let the curtain fall closed behind himself, his expression smoothing out as he began to orient himself in the ER at large.

Gary's room opened up into an improvised hallway, a maze of bland curtains and criss-crossed poles. Posted high up on the wall, just high enough to be seen from within the polyester labyrinth, was a sign reading: waiting room.

With little pause, Lee started toward the sign and the door stationed below it, the hint of a smile playing at his lips.

He wouldn't deny that he took some amount of pride from the doctor's assumption. It was his every intent to be there for his team in a meaningful capacity—even if their recoveries and grasp of their abilities often seemed to rest in pasts and actions he couldn't possibly control. At that thought, Lee's smile faded from his face.

There was _one _alpha whose past he had been in control of, and it didn't take much to imagine Danielle in Gary's circumstance. Though it pained Lee to acknowledge it, she was on more than enough drugs—and involved with more than enough of the wrong people—that an overdose was not only within question, but almost to be expected. The difference between Danielle and Gary, of course, was that Lee had a fairly strong idea of what his daughter was getting into. Whatever psychology told him about taking responsibility for the actions of others, Lee knew the impact he'd had on her. His decision to study the alpha phenomena at the price of her childhood shaped their relationship to this day. If he were in Sandra Bell's place, however, if he knew that someone_ else_ had put Danny in danger… Lee could scarcely begin to form an explanation, a way to tell Sandra enough to keep Gary on the team while somehow keeping her enough in the dark to spare her federal, or Red Flag, involvement.

There were, after all, few circumstances under which an autistic man in work-to-life therapy would encounter an invisible, knife wielding psychopath. Sighing weakly, Lee turned a final left and crossed the threshold into another, shorter hallway.

_As Gary would put it, what's our cover? _The DoD had taken care of things as far as the hospital was concerned—it was government business and that was all they needed to know—but Lee wasn't sure he could tell Gary's mother anything but the truth at this point.

_How much of it she'll take before slitting my _own_ throat, I can't say._

And with that, Lee entered the waiting room, a florescent lit, bustling place full of forms and people and nurses with charts. Against the far wall, Nina, Rachel, and Cameron waited in sparsely padded chairs. Cameron leaned into a cell phone, while Nina looked pointedly away. Only Rachel, ever attuned to her environment, looked up as he approached.

"Oh, Dr. Rosen, thank goodness you're here!"

Lee couldn't help but shake his head. At the moment, it didn't seem his presence was doing much good at all.

**xxx**

And again, thank you for reading. Time allowing, I would love to hear from you!


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